Skip to main content

· One min read
Franco Testagrossa

High-level summary​

This week, the Hydra team mainly focused on preparing a masterclass and workshop for #CardanoSummit2023.

In addition, they improved the Hydra node API's submit-transaction endpoint to accept three different encoding types: Base16 encoded CBOR string, TextEnvelope type, and JSON. This improvement offers users greater flexibility and ease of interaction with the API.

Finally, the team has followed up on the TUI brick upgrade to version 1.10. This effort has resulted in addressing minor details and enhancing the overall user experience with the TUI.

What did the team achieve this week​

  • Prepare presentation and workshop for Cardano Summit.
  • More TUI fixes and improvements.
  • Upgrade GHC from 9.2.8 -> 9.6.2 #1105
  • Solved user issue related to submitting transactions in cbor format #1111.
  • Fix hydraw connection issue making it more stable #1121.

What are the goals of next week​

  • Work on hydra-poll dApp for Cardano summit.
  • Start the work on packaging hydra-node and related services.

· 2 min read
Damian Nadales

High level summary​

During the past two weeks the Consensus team received additional benchmark results for the UTxO-HD feature that show the resource usage for the in-memory backend is not satisfactory for a mainnet release, and we need to wait on the implementation of a new infrastructure to benchmark the LMDB backend (not likely to happen before next year). While we wait on this, we are evaluating the feasibility of making the UTxO-HD feature switchable, which will enable us to release it as an experimental feature. On the Genesis front we produced the first draft for a Survivable Eclipse Duration Model. We released version 8.5.0 of Cardano node, resumed work on subpar handling of blocks from the future, and improved our tracing system to assist problem troubleshooting in the node.

UTxO-HD​

  • The Plutus workload benchmark for the in-memory backend showed no regressions for the metrics of interest, but it does show an increase in resource usage.
  • We got additional ad-hoc measurements on memory UTxO-HD consumption. The memory usage of the in-memory backend is not satisfactory for a release. The memory usage of the LMDB backend is considerably lower, but we need to see how much lower we can bring it by running a node whose memory is constrained to 8GB.
  • We resumed work on an alternative solution that will make the UTxO-HD switchable. This will enable us to keep the baseline performance by totally disabling UTxO-HD, while allowing users to experiment with the feature if they wish to do so.

Genesis​

  • We produced the first draft for a Survivable Eclipse Duration Model (422).

Support​

  • Esgen finished his cycle as release engineer. Node 8.5.0 has been released.
  • We resumed work on the subpar handling of block from the future (4251).
  • We prepared the integration of new tracing events for the next node release. These tracing events will help debugging potential issues in the node (such as the previously mentioned issue).

· 2 min read
Jean-Philippe Raynaud

High level overview​

This week, the Mithril team started working on the decentralization of the Mithril networks with a proof of concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking between nodes. The team kept working on the adaptation of the Mithril client as a library, on the deterministic computation of the transaction history of an address from the immutable files, and on the refactoring that will fix the bottleneck of the key registration in the aggregator. Additionally, they published a security advisory for the Mithril relay.

Finally, they enhanced the CI/CD to publish multiple packages to crates.io and started improving the developer experience with the Mithril devnet.

Low level overview​

  • Published the security advisory Mithril relay could expose Cardano block producer internal IP when updated #GHSA-9m3h-72xj-x2gq
  • Worked on the issue P2P Networking - Proof of Concept #1300
  • Worked on the issue Make mithril-client crate a library #1141
  • Worked on the issue Compute deterministic Cardano transactions history PoC #1283
  • Worked on the issue ProtocolKeyRegistration creates performance bottleneck in aggregator #1187
  • Completed the issue Publish multiple packages to crates.io #1298
  • Completed the issue Rename public key published in releases #1292
  • Completed the issue Mithril networks infrastructure maintenance #1218
  • Worked on the issue Fix devnet Mithril Docker images #1272

· One min read
Marcin Szamotulski

High-level overview of sprint 46​

Bootstrap Peers​

We continued reviewing of bootstrap peers, see ouroboros-network#4555.

Towards Typed Protocols 0.2.0.0​

We diagnosed the performance regression of the new design. The work on typed-protocols will be postponed. For more details see the typed-protocols#3. As an outcome of the performance debugging we prepared PR which updates the demo-ping-pong and demo-chain-sync applications.

Peer Sharing​

We made progress in review of ouroboros-network#4644, which simplifies the peer sharing and fixes the ouroboros-network#4642 issue.

Tech Debt​

We reviewed the ouroboros-network#3836 PR which inspects all the uses of error in ouroboros-network. The PR was prepared by Galois.

· One min read
James Chapman

The team works on applied research and consulting in formal methods that is directly applicable to evidence based engineering in Core Tech and beyond.

High level summary​

The team is currently formalising mini protocols and testing the performance analysis tool

Details​

  • extending thorn-calculus to support synchronous channels

  • extending mini-protocol framework to support communication with the environment

  • working on chain sync mini-protocol

  • planning for JLAMP journal paper submission

  • analysying any-to-finish